


Sweet Thing

by extemporally (hidebehindtrees)



Category: The Runaways (2010)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-08
Updated: 2011-01-08
Packaged: 2017-10-14 14:20:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/150123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hidebehindtrees/pseuds/extemporally
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tour leads to unexpected situations. Sometimes these go unresolved.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sweet Thing

[driving]

At first it was disgusting, going for days without a proper shower and days around other girls who hadn’t had proper showers or changes of clothes, but still found the time to refresh their makeup, especially in the middle of summer. After a while Joan stopped minding or noticing. It was just another part of the changing landscape that descended outside their car windows, like the slick roll of the van’s wheels and the emptiness that would settle inside her after hours of driving along nowhere roads.

It was a scorcher of an afternoon, hot as Cherie Curie when she pulled performances out. Joan knew she should probably take off her jacket if she didn’t want to die of heat, but there wasn’t much space in the van and she’d only just managed to smooth over a fight between her girls. She got the feeling that if she moved she might break the odd, febrile peace that had settled over the van in the aftermath. All the time it was squabbling, squabbling, squabbling. If there was one thing she couldn’t stand it was all this girl-on-girl aggression. What a bloody waste of time.

Instead she slammed her shoulder blades back against the seat. Dust flew from the upholstery right up her nostrils and she snorted, then coughed. Running a hand through her greasy hair.

“Careful,” Sandy said, and when Joan looked up she blushed and looked away, weird little half-smile on her face.

Joan knew what she was thinking about.

“When’s our next break,” Cherie asked Scottie, who was driving. Squashed up against her Joan could see the waxiness of her red lipstick and the way it was smudged under her lip. Smell the powder in her hair.

Her eyeshadow, as always, was perfect.

“Stopping soon,” Scottie said. Joan could see his smile in the rearview mirror. Cherie had him curled around her little finger and she knew it.

“Thank god,” Joan muttered. Her fingernails felt like they were encased in dirt.

“Can’t stand us anymore?”

“No, I need to piss.”

[show]

Cherie started it. It was Cherie who had left off wearing a bra after the first couple of days, even when she was wearing white T-shirts like she did today. Whenever she saw anyone staring (and how could they not, really, reddish nipple just about apparent under the thin cotton) she’d lift her chin and stare right back.

And if she didn’t mind them looking, she’d smile.

[stage]

Joan loved and hated tour. She missed her girlfriend. Didn’t call home as often as she probably should, but it wasn’t like that was going to help with the sexual frustration. Sometimes she wondered if the other girls felt it too, but probably not, because they didn’t have to share beds with Cherie Curie and, every hotel night, get besieged with the sight of her narrow back encased in a tank top, the sweet smell of her.

At least they still had shows to play and rehearsals to do. Shows were the shit, even when they got heckled. Or maybe even better then, because they had to be angry and hecklers gave them something to be angry at, and when they came off yet another stage it didn’t matter that they weren’t signed yet because they would soon be, because of the lights, the sweat, the smell of cigarettes.

“Play it up,” Kim told the both of them. “You got a buzz, the both of you, and men dig that sort of thing. Play it up, but don’t be too touchy-feely. Don’t talk about your _feelings_ , unless it’s about –”

“Wanting an orgasm, yeah, rock n roll, got it,” Cherie said, and Joan cut a sideways glance at her. She looked bored. Not put off by what Kim was telling them to do. Not that Joan cared.

So they played it up. Stalked each other around stage after stage, still dusty from the previous show, screamed into a single mike together. Joan didn’t know what the effect was like, of course. During most shows she was barely sentient, just an amorphous mass of muscle memory and adrenaline, but the screaming was loud as ever and made the stage drop away from her feet, just like always, so they must have been doing something right.

[possession]

Cherie had a Walkman.

She was careless with her belongings, usually. They all were. Cherie especially. On tour, you got to see how other people lived, their habits and lifestyle choices and all that other shit you didn’t necessarily want to know. Cherie loved dressing up but she packed gracelessly, stuffing things into her suitcase without folding them and strewing dirty clothes amongst the clean.

But this, she was careful with. Even when it ceased to have the status of a new thing, exactly, she was careful with which pocket she stowed it in during the day and where she put it at night, and folded her headphones in carefully, rolling the wire around the headset.

Joan didn’t _care_ , beyond borrowing it once or twice. Mostly it seemed to cut down on the car fights because Cherie had her own music to listen to. That was good. She’d do that instead of fighting over the radio with Lita, gazing out the window dreamily like there was actually something to see there instead of dried-out cornfields on a hot summer’s day.

It made her less interested in talking to Joan or any of the others, though. But once Cherie let Joan use her Walkman while they were both strung out on coke, Joan didn’t end up breaking it or anything, but the tape inside had been Bowie and she’d listened, shivering, to the ominous monstrosity of piano and something else she couldn’t identify transition into something that sounded like her heartbeat until she realised no it was still coming from the Walkman everything was hazy _I’ll make you a deal_ and then time skipped or something and he was, someone was, screaming _we’ll buy some drugs and watch a band_

Bowie knew what shit was about.

Cherie had been next to her, also high, also lying on the bed in the hotel room. As Joan came down she noticed Cherie was giggling, surprisingly inert for when she was on a trip.

“Your face looked so –” and she laughed some more, again weakly. Joan noticed they were holding hands, palms clammy from the sweat from the heat of the day. For some reason she thought of turning on her side to kiss Cherie, wide and open-mouthed.

She never did. She could have, but she didn’t. She didn’t even know why she’d thought of that, because she might have been close to Cherie but Cherie was a bitch on her best days and a diva on her worst, and good and bad came jumbled together in a heap for Cherie, like her clean and dirty laundry. Not that that mattered, anyway. It was just a kiss, right?

Instead what she really did was raise both their hands, still clasped, weakly. Inadvertently she ended up slapping Cherie’s face, not what she intended, with some force, again, not what she’d intended.

“Shit,” she said eloquently.

“I should be saying that,” Cherie said. Actually she never really swore. They both started laughing hysterically until Cherie regained her composure and licked Joan’s shoulder, and then they started again.

Joan never again listened to Bowie’s music, or thought the words _bowie knife_ without remembering that afternoon. Considering she never did much of either – Bowie was always more Cherie’s thing – it wasn’t a deal-breaker.


End file.
